Mickey Zucker Reichert - By Chaos Cursed (15 page)

“You’ve decided to join me?” Bolverkr did not wait for an answer to his question. He took a step toward her, reaching for the satin gold waves of her hair. “A wise choice. One you won’t regret.”

Silme sidled, avoiding Bolverkr’s touch. “I came to talk.” She added carefully in a voice designed to make her point clear without inciting, “Only to talk.”

Bolverkr lowered his hand with a resigned shrug. “Very well. Talk.” He leaned against a gnarled pine, watching Silme expectantly.

Having anticipated that Bolverkr would begin the conversation, Silme felt unprepared. She rose to the occasion, keeping accusation from her tone. “The dragon we met outside the town....” Silme paused to consider her wording.

Bolverkr smiled. “Pretty, wasn’t he?”

Silme’s hand curled at her side, a habit acquired when she used to carry a dragonstaff. Since her sapphire rank-stone had exploded, she could no longer store spell energy and saw no reason to lug the container around. “So, I can, in fact, presume
you
sent the dragon after us.”

“Do you know of any other Dragonrank mages this far south?” Bolverkr’s pale eyes sparkled, and the grin remained. “Actually, though, I sent the creature after the village. You and the others arrived conveniently.” He added quickly. “Though, of course, I kept it from hurting you.”

“So you were there controlling it?” Though it seemed obvious, Silme asked anyway. Summonings had never become a part of her repertoire, but she knew from learning defenses against dragons that, once called, a dragon could be given a single command, such as to attack a specific individual, group, or village.

“Yes,” Bolverkr admitted freely. “I was there.”

Silme plucked at a fold in her dress. She met Bolverkr’s gaze directly, gray eyes glaring into blue. “But when we killed your dragon, you didn’t attack.”

“Ah.” Bolverkr chuckled, folding his arms across his chest. “So you noticed my gift to you.”

“Gift?”

Bolverkr pushed off the pine trunk, straightening. “Freyr and the Fates threw you together with a group of fools, and your wonderful sense of loyalty makes you believe you need to protect them for eternity.” He shrugged, his rugged, timeless face betraying no emotion.

A fox call whirred through the night, answered by a distant bark, like an echo.

Bolverkr continued, “No matter that these companions consist of an overprotected sorceress of insignificant level, a thief, and a crazed anachronism who, by all natural right, should be dead.” Bolverkr crinkled his nose in disgust. “An elf, too. A magical creation of less consequence than the dragons you’ve killed as beasts.”

“I love Allerum,” Silme blurted. “And I care about my friends.” Her words came without need for thought.

“Why?”

The question caught Silme off her guard. “What?”

“Why do you love Allerum? Why do you care about your friends?”

“I—” Silme considered. “I don’t need a reason to love my husband or my friends.”

“True.” A puff of wind lifted Bolverkr’s cloak, revealing silks that clearly outlined a slender but well-proportioned body. “But blind loyalty only works for lemmings. I would never fault anyone for dedicating himself to a cause he believes in. On the other hand, to devote your life and sacrifice a chance at happiness and total power for a love you can’t justify is stupid and wasteful.”

“Just because I can’t justify my love to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

“Agreed,” Bolverkr conceded. “But you should be able to justify it to yourself. When’s the last time you took stock of your feelings? Do you really love these inferiors, or are you just reacting out of habit? Look deep inside yourself, Silme. I think your heart might tell you something different than your mind.”

“I think not.” Silme tried to redirect the conversation, but Bolverkr interrupted.

“How else can you explain knifing Taziar?”

Silme gasped, not wanting to be reminded of her blunder. She tried to believe she had reacted out of desperation, using the tenets gleaned from her travels with Kensei Gaelinar. Yet she could not forget the rage that had flashed through her at Taziar’s interference. She could not escape the memory of a warm glow of self-righteous justice when the blade had struck home, though guilt had followed on its heels. “An accident,” she grumbled vaguely. “A stupid accident.”

Bolverkr smiled again, in amusement. He did not have to say that the process of drawing a knife and cutting a friend was too complicated and deliberate to pass for accident. It was obvious. “Do as you will. In time, you’ll realize what your heart already knows. The irrelevant companions you call friends have become an annoyance.”

Silme folded her arms, stung to irritation. Recently, everyone and everything seemed to have become an annoyance, and she did feel as if she needed to sequence her priorities. Normally, the ability came naturally. Now, her wits constantly seemed in a scramble. Compulsive action had replaced her usually thoughtful, ordered plans.

Bolverkr’s manner softened. “When that time comes, remember a sorcerer loves you and wants to share his power and his life with you. I’ll be there.” His voice faded to silence beneath the insect chorus. The fox calls became cyclical, the nearer more distant and the farther closer as the creatures sought one another in the darkness.

Bolverkr’s sincerity touched Silme. Trying to read his deeper intentions, she met his gaze. Candor radiated from his eyes and expression, mature emotions that went far beyond Larson’s adolescent passion. Her thoughts unwound like those of a stranger, detailing a life with Bolverkr and the Chaos he offered. Logic showed her a man of great consequence, powerfully tender as well as savagely vengeful. She knew he could understand her devotion to the highest causes and her frustration at having the same townsfolk she had rescued from Bramin’s magic make signs of warding evil when they realized she was Dragonrank as well. He could teach her about things she never knew existed: the earliest years of the Dragonrank mages, spells her dedication to defense had forced her to forsake, the creation of gods and elves. And he could give her the power to practice them without draining out her life energy.

Silme’s life aura gleamed, brighter than she ever remembered it in the past. Unaware of Bolverkr’s methodical Chaos-transfer, she attributed its brilliance to the baby’s linked aura and having gone longer than ever before without tapping life force. Still, beside Bolverkr’s fiery glory, her aura was dwarfed like a lantern in sunlight. For a moment, Bolverkr’s vast potential and the inherent common sense of their coupling took precedence over raw emotion. Then an image of Larson seeped into her thoughts, his angular features strangely handsome, his fragile frame and delicately-pointed ears belying a human mind weighted with morality and none of the elves’ capriciousness. Yet, somehow, the virtues Silme had embraced since childhood seemed distant and insignificant, their importance erased by experience and time.

I love Allerum.
Silme did not allow her thoughts to stray, grounding her reason on the single fact. To contemplate too long might throw her into a frenzy of ideas she did not understand. “Go away.” Her words emerged softly and with too little punch to convince even herself of their sincerity.

Still, Bolverkr honored her request. Light cracked open the hovering darkness of moonless night, and the sorcerer disappeared, leaving a trailing pulse of oily smoke.

The forest seemed to close in on Silme. Suddenly wholly alone, battered from without and within, she began to cry.

Religion, blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires
Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire Chaos! is restored:
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all.

—Alexander Pope
Thoughts on Various Subjects

A gentle shake awakened Al Larson. He tensed, eyes flicking open to Astryd’s tiny face and china doll features. Beyond her, darkness blurred the forest to hulking bands of black and gray. Silme curled some distance away. Larson could not see Taziar. Presumably, the Shadow Climber lay behind him.

My turn on watch.
The constant click of insects and the bantered calls of foxes waxed from dismissed subconscious to wakeful background. Larson yawned, stretching to work the cramps from his muscles. He mouthed the word “thanks,” not wanting to awaken Silme and Taziar by speaking aloud. Silme always slept on the barest edge of awakening, and Taziar rested nearly as lightly.

Astryd shook her head. She gestured at Larson and herself, then pointed behind him into the woods.

Larson stiffened. His hand tightened on the sword hilt. Slowly he turned, seeing only a broad stretch of shadowed woodland. Taziar was nowhere in sight. “Where?” Larson started.

Astryd’s fingers gouged Larson’s arm in warning.

Breaking off, Larson turned back to Astryd, not understanding.

Astryd made a grabbing motion in front of her lips, a plea for silence. Again, she pointed deeper into the forest. Curving her fingers so the tips touched her thumb, she placed the hand by her mouth. Opening and closing her fingers rapidly, she simulated lips and the need to talk. Though crisp, her gestures lacked the urgency that would have cued Larson to danger.

Assuming Astryd wanted to converse in private, Larson nodded his understanding. He inclined his head toward Silme.

Astryd shook her head.

Larson bit his lip. The idea of leaving Silme asleep and alone pained him. He whispered, “We can’t—”

Astryd clamped a hand to Larson’s mouth, shaking her head more vigorously. She waited until he quieted before removing her hand.

Silme did not stir. The patterns of her breathing remained the same.

Turning, Astryd headed off into the forest, crooking a finger over her shoulder for Larson to follow.

Against his better judgment, Al Larson trailed Astryd through autumn-brown undergrowth encased in crumbled leaves. They veered between pine and around copses, ducking beneath a fallen, rotting trunk whose upper end had wedged against a neighbor. Slipping between a pair of narrow hickories, Larson discovered Taziar standing with his foot braced on a deadfall. Astryd sat on the downed trunk.

Larson crouched, his back against a towering oak, awaiting an explanation.

“I’m sorry to call you away in such a strange way.” Astryd scuffed at a pile of pine needles. “I didn’t want to wake Silme.”

Larson frowned, acutely aware that they had not only not awakened Silme, but they had left her unprotected.

Astryd went straight to the point. “There’s something wrong with Silme.”

Freshly awakened from sleep and immediately reminded of his troubles, Larson did not try to hide his annoyance. “What cued you in? Her griping at Shadow or her suggesting I go back to hell?”

Astryd seemed to take no notice of Larson’s sarcasm. “Neither.” She looked up. “And both, I suppose. Do you remember how I linked my magic with Silme’s so she could tap my life energy to transport without risking the baby?”

Larson nodded. At the time, he had lain unconscious and inches from death, but he saw no need for a detailed description of the process. “What of it?”